Until now, hardy hikers who wanted to make the uninterrupted long-distance journey from the Severn estuary in the south of Wales to the Dee in the north, have naturally gravitated to the wonderful Offa's Dyke Path, which stretches 177 miles along, more or less, the Welsh-English border. From this weekend, walkers now have a daunting but dazzling longer alternative. The Wales Coast Path, officially opened last Friday, stretches from Chepstow round to the outskirts of Chester at a length of 870 miles. It takes in not just the entire coastline of mainland Wales, which boasts that it is the first country whose whole coast is now open access to walkers, but that of Anglesey, too. The new path boasts mostly stunning scenery, as well as inevitably a few less salubrious, though rarely uninteresting, stretches. Wales has surely set a standard in coastal path designation which England and Scotland must envy and seek to emulate.